Union home minister Amit Shah has asked the central agencies and states’ police departments to identify, locate and bring back the fugitive narco-traffickers sitting abroad while focusing on action against big drug cartels, people familiar with the development said on Sunday.

The home minister has also asked the police chiefs of states and union territories to make the action against drug traffickers their “prime agenda for the next three years” to achieve a drug-free India.

He was speaking at the two-day National Security Strategies Conference (NSS) of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in Delhi, which concluded on Saturday evening and was attended by over 800 police and intelligence officers from across the country.

In a statement issued late on Saturday night, the ministry of home affairs said – “While appreciating the achievements in the left wing extremism (affected areas), north east and Jammu and Kashmir, Amit Shah has asked the DGPs (director generals of police) to adopt a similar approach for effective implementation of the three new criminal laws and tackling the challenge of narcotics. He advocated the need for a top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top approach in initiating action against big drug cartels, besides focusing on extradition of narco-offenders”.